


Look, Up in the Sky!

by Saone



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-30
Updated: 2011-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saone/pseuds/Saone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The premier heroes of Vertigo City have just been framed. Who could possibly be behind this dastardly deception, and what will the fantastic fivesome do now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look, Up in the Sky!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oh_la_fraise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_la_fraise/gifts).



> Written for a Superhero AU prompt over at the losers_minibang on livejournal. Warning: Extreme misuse/abuse of reality, especially where computers and technology are concerned. Suspension of disbelief is a must for this fic.

Binary is the first to realize something's gone very, very wrong. He hears the surprise in the Colonel's voice upon opening the storage container at the same time he picks up on an odd tingle on the edge of his perception. Through the CCTV footage, not to mention his teammate's bewildred questioning, he knows that instead of a shipment of particularly nasty next-gen weapons - like his intel had suggested - the cargo in the container was approximately two dozen terrified looking children.

The tingling intensifies, and Binary's early warning system goes off like a clarion call. He has barely enough time to make an Admiral Ackbar reference before he's shut out of the port's systems and his team's comms. Someone's jammed his access, and now they're trying to backtrack his hack, trying to trace him back to his home system.

Binary's pretty sure his body just snorted, but his mind's too busy racing through ten thousand networks in over six dozen different countries. Faster than human thought he rides the data streams, doubling back to try and get a good look at the hostile. It's a program, clearly designed by a human and it's no match for a high level technopath. The weakness in the code isn't obvious, but Binary finds it anyway. He studies it, making note of its intricacies and quirks, before sending it spinning off, chasing its own tail. He then sails through a few more systems, making sure it's definitely lost, before letting his consciousness return home.

With a sharply indrawn breath, Jake Jensen finds himself out of the world of circuitry and numbers and back in the squishy confines of his brain. It takes him a moment to get re-acclimated, and then he's moving away from his base computer to look out one of the north facing windows of his apartment. He can just see the harbor in the space between two skyscrapers, and what's visible in that narrow slash of sky makes Jake's blood run cold. There's an orange glow. Something in the harbor is on fire.

Jake's first instinct is to plug back into the network and try to contact the others. If whatever was jamming his signal was just at the docks, and they managed to get away, then he might be able to reach them. _If_ they got away.

"No," he says to his empty apartment, "not gonna go there." He grabs one of his regular laptops and logs onto Twitter and Facebook. "Thank Zombie Jesus for social media and camera phones."

He scrolls through post after post of text-speak that makes even his eyes want to cross, and a few vids that show the long distance aftermath of what happened. Jake manages to glean that it was some sort of explosion, big enough to make the windows rattle in buildings a mile away, but contained only to one section of the docks. There are some reports of Vertigo City's very own superteam, The Special Forces, being seen prior to the blast. Prior, but not after. There are whole threads worrying about the SF Team's whereabouts and safety. There are also threads blaming them for the blast. Those seem to be posted by the same person, and most of the responses to those posts involve the word 'troll'.

Jake shakes his head and clicks away from that window. He thinks about going back into the system again, checking other CCTV cameras to see if he could get a handle on what really happened. But he's not sure if he could stay focused enough to make sure he wiped all traces of his activities. Then he's hit with an idea so simple he nearly feels compelled to hit himself upside the head. With a push off from his desktop, Jake propels himself over to his bookshelf, and the communicator Gearshaft gave him, sitting next to his first edition Harry Potters.

He fiddles with the dials and knobs for a bit before pressing down a button and saying, "hey, Losers, anybody out there?" He waits a minute. "Are there any Losers out there?" There's a note of desperation in his voice, so he takes a few deep breathes before trying one more time. "Are there any Losers able to talk to me tonight? Guys?"

There's no response. Binary's plugged back into his system before his eyes tear up.

_____________

 

Jake met the Losers completely by accident. He had been doing the vigilante thing for a while, but only online. After checking for complaints of unethical or immoral behavior, he'd enter a corporation or government system and poke around until he found some proof of corruption - it usually didn't take long - and he'd set about making things right. Or making someone pay. Sometimes it was as simple as making sure a respectable journalist was forwarded rather incriminating emails, and other times it involved redirecting a few hundred million in ill-gotten gains to various charities. Jake was no angel - he wasn't above making sure his own bank account stayed nice and padded - but he did like to think of himself as a cyber-hero.

Then, one afternoon, a year or so ago, he was sitting in front of his television. A feast of Funyuns and orange soda was set out before him, and he was just waiting for the Hellblazer's game to start, when a breaking news bulletin broke into programming. Jake, like probably a few million other residents, cursed and thought about changing the channel. But before he followed through, something caught his eye.

It was a robot. A great, big, honkin' robot. And there was another one behind it, and another one behind that, and another, and another. There was an army of killer (Jake assumed) robots marching towards downtown. He lived downtown. Crap.

But before he could properly panic, there was a screech of tires signaling the arrival of the SF Team. Like most others, Jake fanboyed the hell out of V-City's premiere superheroes. He grinned and happily awaited watching the Colonel and his team kick some metal ass.

Except, whoever had designed and built the robots did so with the SF Team in mind. None of the heroes' skills or powers made a dent. Literally. Scythe's blades barely scratched the outer casing, and Caliber's bullets fell useless to the ground after impact. Jake started getting worried again, but it was when Gearshaft - trying to get close enough to touch one of the things so his power could stop it's mechanized parts - went down, that Jake realized he could _do_ something.

Someone had to be controlling the robots, and doing so by using a wireless signal. A wireless signal Jake could ride in on. Without a second's though or hesitation, he jacked into his system. It was practically a cakewalk. He zoomed through the air, gliding on a wind of translated information, and just like that he was at the scene and in control. Jake stopped the robots in their tracks, then traced the signal back to its source, a windowless van parked about a block away. He made sure the electronic door locks were sealed before he fried the van's computer and activated its alarm system.

Jake rode another wireless wave back to the robots. He slid into a CCTV camera and watched as Caliber tended to Gearshaft while the Colonel and Scythe glanced around themselves in a slightly bewildered fashion. No one was moving towards the blaring van though. Jensen cast around for something with a speaker and found an outdoor PA system attached to a nearby storefront. He let himself split so he could continue to keep an eye on the situation.

"Um, excuse me, hero-type-people," he said in a quickly crafted voice. "You'll find your bad guys on the other end of that car alarm."

Scythe drew a blade and turned towards the speaker. Jake wasn't exactly sure what that was supposed to accomplish.

The Colonel nodded to Scythe and Caliber. They sped off, and he took the marksman's place by Gearshaft. "Who are you?" he asked in his gruff baritone.

"And how the hell did you do that?" Gearshaft said weakly.

Even spread out amongst wires and circuits and with bits of himself still in the wireless data stream, there's a very human part of Jake that recognized that moment had the potential to be a game changer.

"I..." A name? What should he call himself? He casts about for information, and in the end decides to go with the truth. "I'm Binary."

"Well, Binary, you want to answer Gearshaft's question?"

"No need," Gearshaft said. With the Colonel's help he rose to his feet. He was still shaky, but his jaw was set and determined. From behind his mask, his eyes glanced from the speaker to one of the camera's Jake was using. "He hacked them. Pretty damn impressive."

"Uh, thanks." Jake, no, _Binary_ was incredibly glad base code couldn't blush.

The Colonel put two fingers up to his ear and nodded. He shared a glance with Gearshaft, and then said, "Scythe and Caliber have them. Their faces aren't ringing any bells; could be new players in town. Scythe also said that their van is chocked full of all sorts of computers and interesting toys." He and Gearshaft share another look.

"It'd be nice to have a techy person to help me go through all of that," Gearshaft said loudly.

"Wouldn't it though."

"Um, are you guys," if Binary was close to his throat he would probably be swallowing nervously, "are you guys asking me to join the team?"

"Not so fast, HAL," Gearshaft said. "We're asking you to... _consult_ on this one case. After that, we'll see."

"I... yeah. That would... Okay."

"Set it up," said the Colonel to Gearshaft. He then jogged off in the direction of his other teammates.

"You know where our HQ is?" Gearshaft asked.

"Sure."

"Good. Meet us there in two hours."

"Yeah. Wait, _meet_?"

Gearshaft peered at the camera. "There some reason you don't want us to get a good look at you? Aw, Jesus, you're legal, right, 'cause we don't go in for that teen sidekick bullshit."

"No, no, I'm definitely beyond legal. I just don't have a... Well, I guess I could... Yeah, okay, Special Forces HQ, two hours." With that Binary pulled himself together and streamed back to his apartment. He had a costume to plan out and somehow throw together.

_____________

 

Binary's multi-tasking again, sorting through the many reports about what happened at the docks and simultaneously going through CCTV footage trying to find any sign of his teammates. The cameras closest to the explosion, the ones he had been monitoring before, were destroyed in the blast, and the others he could hack into weren't any help. Binary knows his team can be freakin' ninjas when they want to be, so the fact that there's no video record of them isn't worrying him. Yet.

What is worrying is that there's no record of those kids from the cargo container either. Until Binary picks up a transmission over an Emergency Service's Radio. The fire's contained enough that crews are able to finally get to the epicenter of the blast - one of Gearshaft's transports - and what they found made Binary glad he was out of his body, otherwise he probably would have puked. They found bodies. Charred beyond recognition, but definitely human. Small bones. Children.

The chatter from police and first responders is angry, hurtful, fearful. There are a few voices begging for calm, saying that they should wait and get the whole story before passing judgment. But those voices are being shouted down by those wondering if V-City's beloved heroes have gone rogue. An all points bulletin is put out. The SF Team is officially wanted for questioning.

As Jake comes back into himself for the second time in less than two hours he's never been so glad to be the team's ghost, though whoever set this up obviously knows about him. Enough to try and backhack into his system, but not enough to know that Jake's mind is the best firewall there is.

Jake leans back in his chair, exhausted and needing to rest for a few moments before he delves back in. He stretches his neck side to side, wincing as loud cracks are heard.

Then his entire body flinches almost hard enough to throw himself out of his chair when he clearly hears a voice, which sounds a whole hell of a lot like Gearshaft say, "nasty."

In an instant Jake's on his feet, turned around and staring wide-eyed at his four plain-clothed teammates. Cougar was even wearing his usual hat. "Holy shit! I mean, _holy shit_! If I didn't think three out of four of you would gut me, I would so be doling out hugs right now."

Clay scowls. "Yeah, that's probably a good impulse to control."

Jake runs his hands over his head, still feeling giddy despite the situation and the rather sour looks on his teammate's faces. "How did you guys even find me? You don't know my real name. Hell, we've only met in person a few times."

Pooch snorts. "You're kidding, right? You remember that first time you came to HQ, after the thing with the robots?"

"I was wearing a mask!"

"You were wearing goggles," Cougar says, rolling his eyes.

"They were prescription," Jensen says defensively. "I used to be part of an outdoor basketball league."

"Anyway," Pooch continues, "while you were wearing your goggles and your _stand back I'm going to attempt science_ tee shirt-"

"A classic."

"Your gloveless hands were running over anything they could land on."

"Gloves. Dammit." Jake puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head.

"The point is," Clay says harshly, "we do know who you are, Jacob Jensen. We know everything about you."

"Not everything," Jake says inching backwards. He doesn't like the tone of Clay's voice any more than he likes the looks on his teammate's faces. He wishes he knew how long the team had been in his apartment while he was under, and if they had deduced anything from his behavior.

"Enough," Clay says. "That's the only reason we let you get so close to us. Why we let you in on our real names, on what we call ourselves." Clay smiles. How he manages to make dimples look scary is truly a mystery for the ages. "We know about your sister, your niece. We know where you get your money from, that while you may help people, you're still a thief. We know a lot of things."

"But what we don't know," Roque says, drawing out one of his many blades, "is why you turned traitor."

Jake takes another step back. He holds up his hands, hoping he won't get his fingers sliced off. "I didn't turn on you," he says slowly.

"Right," Roque scoffs, "so that's why just before the shit hit the fan you suddenly went M.I.A. taking our eyes, ears, and comms with you."

"No, I was... Someone jammed the wireless signal and I was shut out. I could tell something was off, and I tried to warn you guys-"

"What? No you didn't." Roque shrugs and repositions the knife in his hand. "I'm gonna cut something off, Clay."

"Admiral Ackbar!" Jake all but screeches. He does some quick footwork and maneuvers himself so his couch is between himself and his approaching, possibly homicidal, teammate. If worse came to worse, he could always jump into the wireless signal. At least his consciousness could live on while his body was cut up into tiny, little pieces.

"That was your warning?!" Pooch throws up his hands. "What... Why... Who the ever-lovin' _fuck_ is Admiral Ackbar?!"

Jake looks closely at the faces before him. "Are you serious? You guys have never seen _Return of the Jedi_?"

"Of course I've seen _Return of the Jedi_ ," Pooch says.

"The-the-the fish guy with the googly eyes who leads the Rebel attack against the second Death Star. The guy who says _'It's a trap'_."

" _That's_ Admiral Ackbar," Pooch says. "The 'It's a trap' guy. And we were supposed to know that?"

Jake's honestly a bit confused. "Doesn't everybody?" While he's trying to puzzle out how anyone could not know such a basic bit of pop culture trivia, he happily notes that the looks on the others' faces have gone from fierce to pained. Roque even puts his knife away.

Clay pinches the bridge of his nose. "In the future, assuming we have one of those, if you think something is a trap, just say the word _trap_. Okay?"

Jake slowly lowers his hands. "Right. Sorry. I truly thought you guys would get that reference, and I had like zero time to warn you before that program was onto me."

"What program?" Cougar asks.

"The program I felt right before communication got shut down. It tried to track me. I let it chase me around the world a few times before I lost it somewhere in Monaco." Jake catches Cougar raising an eyebrow.

"And there's no way it could have traced you back here?" Clay asks.

"It was good," Jake says, "but I'm better."

"If you're so much better than why was your intel fucked?" Roque asks. "'Cause I'm pretty sure this whole mess was a set-up from the get go."

"Yeah," Jake says, "I think you're right. The intel was bogus; it must have been. All I can think is that someone planted it and hoped it would be found. That the possibilities of WMDs right here in V-City would be enough of a lure to reel me in. And they were right."

"Don't beat yourself up too much," Clay says. "None of us questioned it."

"Yeah, but you guys aren't..." Jake sighs. "Forget it."

"You might have fallen for the first part of the trap," Cougar says, closing his eyes, "but we certainly fell for the rest of it."

"The... kids." Jensen says hesitantly.

"We thought they'd be safe in the transport," Clay said, "out of harm's way."

"Except them being in harm's way was part of the plan." Jensen crosses his arms over his chest.

"Have it all figured out, do you?" Roque asks. "That's impressive considering you were napping when we first broke in."

"I wasn't _napping_ , I was..." Jake stops himself, but not before Cougar's laser-sharp attention is on him again. He's not sure why he still wants to keep the full extent of his powers from these men. Except... well, they did just accuse him of betrayal and threaten him, didn't they. "Nevermind," he says. "I've been monitoring police frequencies, and-"

"They're blaming us for the kids, aren't they?" Clay asks.

"Some of them think you guys have gone rogue, and they're scared shitless." Jake shrugs. "And when men like that get scared..."

"They can get violent," Clay finishes. "Okay, let's go over what we know. Some nameless, faceless villain - I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he's someone we've never dealt with before-"

Jake cuts in, "the signature of the program that tried to track me was unfamiliar."

"Would you recognize it if you felt, sorry, _saw_ it again?" Cougar asks.

Jake blinks. He's pretty sure that little slip was on purpose. "Uh, yeah... Yeah, definitely." Jake's heart about stops as Cougar _winks_ at him.

"So," Clay says, "a new player in town lures us to the docks, but instead of the weapons we're expecting, we find a bunch of kids. Jensen gets jammed and then chased by a hostile computer program. We get the kids out of the container and into our transport. Some guys show up and start shooting. We scatter, thinking we'll draw fire away from the kids. Once we're out of the way, someone bombs the car."

Jake nods. That's about what he had surmised.

"But why," Pooch says plaintively. "Why aim specifically for the kids? Unless they knew something, or-"

"Oh, come on, man," Roque says. "You don't get it? The cops think _we_ were responsible. We've been framed."

"Then we go to them and tell them the truth!"

"Pooch..." Clay sighs and glances at Jensen. "It's too late for that, isn't it?"

Jensen looks apologetically at Pooch. "From what I heard... There are some people who don't think we were responsible, but they're getting drowned out by the ones who do. Like I said, they're scared, and they're being reactionary. Maybe when they get a chance to calm down, or when more evidence comes to light, they'll-"

"We don't have time for that," Clay says. He starts to pace around Jake's living room. "Whoever nameless and faceless is, he's smart. For years we've dealt with bad guys who come into town and try to take us out by killing us. But that never worked because we're pretty much the human equivalent of cockroaches."

Jake and the other men have to smile at that. The four field operatives, especially Cougar, were notoriously hard to kill.

"But this guy," Clay continues, "this guy comes in and doesn't even bother trying to kill us, because in one fell swoop he can just discredit us instead. What good are a city's heroes if no one trusts them? Whoever this person is, he-"

"Or she," Roque says. He peers at Clay. "You haven't slept with anybody recently, have you?"

"That's hilarious. Really. Like I was saying, he, _or she_ , has probably planned something big. Jensen, I need you to hack into anything you can find. Go back to your original source for that weapons info. You said you're better than them; prove it. Find us some breadcrumbs."

"Right," Jake says. He waits for the others to get their marching orders and vacate the premises.

Clay raises an eyebrow. "Now, would be good."

"Sure. Okay. It's just... you guys are sticking around?"

"That a problem?" Roque asks with just a hint of threat in his voice. "Is there a specific reason you don't want us sticking around while you work?"

"Well-"

"Actually," Pooch says, "I should get home and check on Jolene."

"It is safe?" Roque glances at Jake.

"I think if whoever this is knew our real names they wouldn't have had to use a computer program to try and track me. Someone would have probably just shown up here, like you guys did."

Clay nods. "Okay, as far as we know, our civilian identities are safe. For now at least. Go home," he says to Pooch, "hug your wife. How's your schedule for tomorrow?"

"I've got a couple of engines to rebuild, but there's no reason I can't close up the shop for a day."

"It's probably best if we don't deviate too far from our norms," Jake says, "for a few days, at least."

"He's right," Clay says. "Everybody keep your regular hours. There's not a lot we can do yet anyway, not until we know what we're up against. We'll meet back here at eighteen-hundred hours tomorrow." He looks at Jake. "I assume you can make our private communications secure?"

"I've always made our private communications secure."

"You find anything, you contact me. I don't care how late or how early. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Good. All right, Losers, let's get gone." Clay claps a steady hand on Roque's back and uses the other to gesture towards the door to Jake's apartment.

"I will stay," Cougar says.

Jake tries to think of the most polite way he could say _get the hell out_. "I really don't think-"

"Fine by me," Clay says with a shrug. He then narrows his eyes and dips his head a bit, giving Cougar a look of some significance.

Jake can't decipher their silent communication, and it makes him itchy as hell. There are goodbyes, and admonishments to be careful, and then Jake is left alone with Cougar and his disconcerting stare.

Cougar glances towards Jake's computer. "Aren't you going to get started?"

"Look, man," Jake says, trying - and failing - to smile, "you really don't have to stick around."

"I want to."

"It's just when I hack, I..."

"Yes?"

"I, uh, do it..." Jake fidgets, and sweat pops out on his forehead. "In my underwear. Yeah, my underwear. It's... _freeing_."

Cougar's eyes rake over Jake from head to toe and then back up again. He licks his lips. "I have no problem with that."

For a moment, Jake's brain goes completely offline. "I... What... _Seriously_?"

"I am very serious." Cougar takes a step forward. "About many things." He takes another step.

Jake's laugh is kind of manic. He certainly wasn't expecting this. Not that the possibilities of such attentions are unwelcome - it's Cougar - they're just unexpected as hell - again, it's _Cougar_. "This is, man, this is... Are you playing with me right now?"

Cougar cocks his head to one side. "Not as much as you are playing with me."

"I don't understand."

"How long have we known each other, Jake?"

Jake takes a moment to appreciate the way his name rolled off Cougar's tongue. He clears his throat, and hopes to hell he's not blushing. "About a year now."

"Yes, and in all that time, do you think I have not been paying attention?"

"What, to me?" Jake shakes his head. "We've only met face to face a handful of times."

"True. But your voice whispers in my ear nearly every night."

Jake knows he's blushing now. "Oh. Heh. Yeah. Um..."

"I know you have not been truthful about your abilities." Cougar holds up one hand when Jake starts to sputter denials. "You are even beyond Pooch's skills with engines, are you not? You do not even have to touch the machines to have them speak to you."

Jake's not blushing now; all the blood has drained from his face. He doesn't think he's going to pass out, though unconsciousness would be kind of welcome at this point. "How did you..."

"I am... taciturn, not stupid. As I said, I pay attention. You sometimes make slips."

"Like tonight, when I talked about feeling that program."

"Yes." Cougar purses his lips. "I knew someone else like you once, in another life."

Jake doesn't ask what happened to that other technopath, though he really wants to. "So, you're okay with the whole extreme freakiness thing?"

"You are no more a freak than any of us," Cougar says. "Me, with my aim that never fails. Roque and his skills with his blades. Clay and his-"

"Ability to find and court the most psychotic woman in a hundred mile radius?"

"You are trying to deflect." Cougar gives Jake a fond, if exasperated, look.

"Am not."

Cougar raises one eyebrow.

"Am too," Jake says with a sigh.

Cougar snorts, then takes Jake's right bicep in a firm, but gentle hold. He steers the younger man towards his computer desk. "Later, there is much we must discuss, but now, you will find this evil person."

Jake eases down in his ergonomic chair. "What will you do?"

There's that fond, but exasperated, look again. "I will watch over you."

"Oh, that's..." his initial reaction is to say 'creepy'. But it's _Cougar_ , and if Jake's honest with himself, the thought of Cougar watching over him is... "Nice. That's nice."

Cougar nods, and tips his hat, and the last thing Jake sees before he slips away are a pair of warm eyes gazing down at him.

_____________

 

Jake doesn't know how long he was under, but when he finally comes back to his body bright sunlight is streaming through the windows. He's out of his chair like a shot, startling Cougar who, it seems, had spent his time perusing Jake's graphic novel collection.

"¡Coño! What-"

"Gotta pee!" Jake skids across the floor and into the bathroom. He can't quite contain a groan of satisfaction as he lets go. "Should've gone before I went in," he mutters.

"I'll remember that for next time," Cougar says from the doorway.

"Jesus!" Jake starts and nearly causes quite a mess. "Privacy, man! Shit!"

"You left the door open."

"Yeah, well... whatever. Shut up. And call Clay."

Even the most subtle trace of amusement disappears from Cougar's face. "You found something?"

"Oh, yeah. I found something all right."

_____________

 

"So, what you're saying is that this _Max_ ," Clay sneers as he says the name, "person has been feeding you information for months?"

"Yep." Jake shakes his head. "That's why nothing felt off. All the other intel he's given us has panned out, from drug shipments to prostitution rings. I thought he was solid. Except, now..."

"Now, what?" Pooch asks.

Jake looks around at the men once again assembled in his apartment. "Now, I think it wasn't so much about gaining our trust, but about using us."

Clay rubs a hand down his face. "He had us take out his competition."

"And clean up his messes," Jake says. "Once I isolated his signature I went back over all our cases for the past few months. Max has been a silent player in a hell of a lot of them. He's been moving into V-City gradually for ages."

What follows is a round of cursing that's impressive in its vehemence and vocabulary.

"How the hell did we not notice this?" Roque asks Clay. "The kid got hoodwinked by a computer screen, whatever, but you and me... We've been busting shits like him for over a decade; how did we miss this?"

"Because you're used to dealing with criminals, and Max doesn't operate like them," Jake says, smarting a little from the 'hoodwinked' comment, even if it was true. "He's... he's something else."

"What," Pooch asks, "like a meta? Like us?"

"I'm not sure, I just..." Jake takes a deep breath. "I tried to track him as best as I could, to try and find his current location or maybe any future plans, but they all turned out to be dead ends. So, I took the info I had and tried to backtrack it - tried to find out who he really was, and where he came from - and I kept bumping up against the same kind of server." Jake can feel a rare headache coming on. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

"C'mon, man, don't keep us in suspense," Pooch says, "what kind of server."

"A government server."

There's more cursing.

"You're saying he's a spook?" Roque asks incredulously.

"I don't know what he is. I don't even know if he's human," Jake says. "I couldn't find a lot of information on him, but what I did find... The first mention of him is from right after World War II when he helped some Nazi scientists escape from Germany."

"Let me guess," Roque says, "he sent them down to South America to work on cloning Hitler."

"No, he sent them to Nevada to work on our nuclear program." Jake shakes his head. "The guy's files read like some of the worst kind of pop culture, conspiracy fiction, except they're all official. Over the past fifty some years Max has been involved in every backdoor deal from the heroin trade out of Southeast Asia to the weapon trade with the Middle East and South America. Not to mention all the people he has in his pocket and the political maneuvering." Jake lets himself slump a bit. Saying everything out loud is demoralizing as hell. "I'm also seventy-nine percent sure that Max was involved in the Kennedy assassination, among others."

There's no cursing this time, just a lot of tired and drawn faces.

Roque speaks for all of them when he says, "Fuck me."

"What the hell are we gonna do, Clay?" Pooch asks.

Clay doesn't respond for a moment. Finally, he says, "I don't care what kind of history he has, or what kind of acronym he hides behind. Max killed twenty-five innocent kids right in front of us. He's gonna pay." His eyes bore into Jake's. "Can you find him?"

Jake wants to say yes, but now's not the time for placating lies. "No, I don't think so. I can maybe track some of his movements, but he's smart and spends most of his time off the grid. There's something else, though," Jake says, before his teammates get too depressed, "we're not the only ones looking for him. Someone else had been recently digging for him too."

"Who?" Clay asked.

"Aisha al-Fadhil."

"Wait," Pooch says, "is she related to-"

"One of the drug dealers Max had us take in a couple months ago?" Jensen finished. "Yep. She's his daughter. Fadhil was murdered less than twenty minutes after he was put in gen-pop. Max didn't just want Fadhil out of the way, he wanted him eliminated, permanently. Now, I tried to gain access to Fadhil's online records - his bank accounts, emails - and there's nothing. It was scrubbed."

"Fadhil knew something," Clay says.

"You think he shared with the girl?" Roque asks.

"It's a good possibility," Jake says. "She at least knows Max exists, which is more than most people."

"All right," Clay says, "initiate contact, but don't let her know who we are. Not yet. She might hold us as responsible as Max."

"Roger that."

"Until we clear our names, everything at HQ is off limits. Pooch, find us some kind of innocuous transport - when we go out from now on we're gonna have to blend. Roque, Cougar, you two are on getting us new weapons. Again, we need to be nondescript."

Roque looks almost comically distraught. "My blades?"

"Sorry, man," Clay says, "too identifiable. How do you feel about explosives?"

"Guys," Pooch says loudly, ensuring everyone's attention, "I'm all for taking this bastard down, but if he's as connected as Jensen said then we're pretty much gonna be waging a war here."

There's silence, then Cougar, speaking for the first time since the meeting started, says quite succinctly, "he started it. We will finish it."

With that, the Losers get to work.

_____________

end


End file.
